Red, White & Royal Blue
Casey McQuiston, 2019
St. Martin's Press
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250316776
Summary
What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House.
There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.
Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals.
What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined.
Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all?
Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1990-91 (?)
• Where—Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.A.
• Education—Louisiana State University
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, as well as a pie enthusiast. She writes books about smart people with bad manners falling in love. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, she now lives in New York City with her poodle mix and personal assistant, Pepper. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A n] exquisite debut…. McQuiston masterfully navigates two very different political realms, conjuring the quick-fire decision-making of a progressive White House and the iron-grip traditionalism of Buckingham Palace with equal skill. That would be impressive enough, but it's nothing compared to the consuming vividness of Alex and Henry. They shine as individuals… and when they fall in love, the intensity of their infatuation, youthful but not immature, is intoxicating…. McQuiston manages to make her characters believably, truly flawed while still utterly lovable…. It's hard to watch [Alex] fall in love with Henry without falling in love a bit yourself—with them, and with this brilliant, wonderful book.
Jaimie Green - New York Times Book Review
Effervescent and empowering on all levels, Red, White & Royal Blue is both a well-written love story and a celebration of identity. McQuiston may not be royal herself, but her novel reigns as must read rom-com.
NPR
[A] fireworks in the sky, glitter in your hair joyous royal romance that you’ll want to fall head over heels in love with again and again. A+
Entertainment Weekly
[An] escapist masterpiece…. It’s a truly glorious thing to live inside the world of this book and to imagine it becoming reality, too.
Vogue
The super specific love story you never knew you needed.
Cosmopolitan
(Starred review) [O]utstanding…. The impossible relationship between Alex and Henry is portrayed with quick wit and clever plotting. The drama… is both irresistible and delicious. Readers will be eager to see more from McQuiston after this extremely promising start.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [With] quick-witted dialog and a complicated relationship…, McQuiston's debut is an irresistible, hopeful, and sexy romantic comedy that considers real questions about personal and public responsibility.
Library Journal
(Starred review) In between sweet and steamy love scenes, Red, White & Royal Blue allows readers to imagine a world where coming out involves no self-loathing; where fan fiction and activist Twitter do actual good…. This Blue Wave fantasy could be the feel-good book of the summer.
Booklist
(Starred review) The much-loved royal romance genre gets a fun and refreshing update…. The love affair between Alex and Henry is intense and romantic… [with] poetic emails that manage to be both funny and steamy. A clever, romantic, sexy love story.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Red, White & Royal Blue has fun with a number of romance tropes. Which ones are your favorites and why are they so appealing?
2. At the beginning of the novel, Alex and Henry are enemies, then they become friends, and eventually lovers. Why does their relationship work so well? How do they balance each other out?
3. What’s the most swoon-worthy moment in this book (if you can pick one)? What do you think is the biggest turning point for Alex and Henry’s relationship? Discuss.
4. McQuiston adds a great deal of LGBTQ+ historical context for Alex’s journey throughout the novel. In what ways is this important for both Alex and the reader?
5. Alex and Henry’s communication escalates from texts to phone calls, and eventually to intense emails that quote the love letters of historical figures. How does their correspondence add to the story?
6. While the book is about a romantic relationship at its core, there are a number of other relationships with friends, parents, and siblings throughout. How are these relationships important to Alex and Henry, and how do they enhance the story?
7. McQuiston has provided a rich cast of supporting characters. Who is your favorite supporting character and why? Do you have any favorite secondary pairings? If so, who and why?
8. How do the concepts of community and found family play a part in the novel? How might Alex and Henry’s journey have differed without a support system of friends and family in place?
9. Red, White & Royal Blue takes place in a United States and United Kingdom that closely resemble our own but ultimately exist in an alternate universe. How do the politics in the book reflect what’s happening in the real world? Who are your favorite fictional political or royal figures in the book and why?
10. Why do readers have royal fever? What is it about royalty that sparks such interest? What did you think of this royal family? Did it make you think differently about real-life royal families?
11. The book ends with Alex’s Democrat mom, Ellen Claremont, winning a second term as President of the United States and Alex and Henry making plans for the future. What happens afterward for this cast of characters? Where do you see Alex and Henry in five years, in ten?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Genuine Fraud
E. Lockhart, 2017
Random Children's
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385744775
Summary
From the author of We Were Liars, comes a unique novel that showcases E. Lockhart’s unmated ability to play with style and deliver a perfectly plotted, well-written novel with a surprise twist.
Imogen is a runaway heiress, an orphan, a cook, and a cheat.
Jule is a fighter, a social chameleon, and an athlete.
An intense friendship. A disappearance. A murder, or maybe two.
A bad romance, or maybe three.
Blunt objects, disguises, blood, and chocolate. The American dream, superheroes, spies, and villains.
A girl who refuses to give people what they want from her.
A girl who refuses to be the person she once was. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Emily Jenkins
• Birth—1967
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Rasied—Cambridge, Washington; Seattle, Washington
• Education—B.A., Vassar College; Ph.D., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City area
Emily Jenkins, who also writes under the name E. Lockhart is a writer of children's picture books, young adult novels, and adult fiction.
Her first novel as E. Lockhart, The Boyfriend List, was published in 2005 and has been followed by three sequels, The Boy Book (2006), The Treasure Map of Boys (2009), and Real Live Boyfriends (2010).These four novels are also known as the Ruby Oliver novels, based on their central protagonist.
Lockhart's 2008 novel, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, was a finalist for both the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Michael L. Printz Award. Her picture books, written as Emily Jenkins, have won numerous awards, including Boston Globe-Horn Book Award honors and the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Book Award. Her 2014 novel, We Were Liars, has achieved wide acclaim from reviewers.
Jenkins grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Seattle, Washington. In high school she attended summer drama schools at Northwestern University and the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. She attended Lakeside School, a private high school in North Seattle. She went to Vassar College and graduate school at Columbia University. She has a doctorate in English literature. She currently lives in the New York City area. (From Wikipedia and the author's website. Retrieved 2/27/2014.)
Book Reviews
Genuine Fraud is a disquieting book, one built craftily enough to reward repeat readings.
Jeff Giles - New York Times Book Review
(Starred review.) Lockhart blends the privileged glamour of We Were Liars with a twisty, backward-running plot that’s slick with cinematic violence.… [The] storyline… will keep readers on their toes, never entirely sure of what these girls are … capable of (Ages 12–up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Jule is…a survivor. The narrative moves backward in time, constantly forcing readers to adjust their opinions of the characters and events.… [For those] who love twisty mysteries, stories about class conflict, and tough-as-nails teen girls (Gr. 9-up). —Stephanie Klose
School Library Journal
(Starred review.) Captivating…bewitching
Booklist
(Starred review.) Can Jule recognize her own true self within the tangled story of the past year?… Her unsettling storytelling, filled with energy and a fair amount of violence … will challenge preconceptions about identity and keep readers guessing (Age 12-adult).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Genuine Fraud … then take off on your own:
1. Genuine Fraud explores identity. What plays the greatest part in your own sense of who you are — where you come from … what you've experienced … your interests … how you look … how you talk? How do Jule and Imogen establish their identifies?
2. Follow-up to Question 2: How much does the way other people view you affect how you view yourself? Are you always the same person no matter where you are or who you are with? What about Jule and Imogen?
3. Describe the two young women. In what way are they different, and in what way are they similar? How do they affect each other? Whom do you find more sympathetic?
4. At what point in the novel did you become unsure of your original assessment of Jule? Was there a point where you couldn't be sure what she was capable of?
5. How does the fighting off her attackers in the arcade affect Jules?
6. In what way have action movies shaped Jule's view of society's expectations for women? How does she set about subverting those expectations?
7. Jules accuses Forrest of being clueless when it comes to his sense of privilege: he has no understanding of what it means to adapt yourself to others' customs, nor does he understand that others must adapt to him. Have you ever been in either position — having to adapt to someone else or being insensitive to someone who might be struggling to adapt to you?
8. How would you answer Jule's question to Paolo: "Do you think a person is as bad as her worst actions?… Or do you think human beings are better than the very worst things we have ever done?" (p 76.)
9. What is the significance of the book's title? It's an oxymoron, so what does it mean?
(Questions adapted from Random House Teacher's Guide.)
The Revisioners
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, 2019
Counterpoint Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781640092587
Summary
In 1924, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery.
Now her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine’s family.
Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine’s descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman who pays Ava to be her companion.
But Martha’s behavior soon becomes erratic, then threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine’s converge.
The Revisioners explores the depths of women’s relationships—powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors. It is a novel about the bonds between mothers and their children, the dangers that upend those bonds.
At its core, The Revisioners ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1982 (?)
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Dartmouth; J.D., University of California-Berkeley
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley.
Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom (2017), was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook's Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A] stunning new novel…. Song lyrics, prayers, chants and Scripture are used liberally to situate the characters in time, but also to bind them to one another through a shared culture.… Today’s readers will find the novel’s most visceral moments of cruelty all too familiar: white Americans dismantling any pretense of civility, taking out their own great pain on a black body. But the… novel is about the women, the mothers.… The Revisioners also reminds us that… there are also connections… that turn a collection of individuals into a community, and will forever be more significant than any bond that’s merely skin deep.
Stephanie Powell Watts - New York Times Book Review
[Sexton's] subtle portrayal of a black mother’s competing desires is layered with both pathos and wit…. We hear from her as an enslaved child in 1855 and as a successful businesswoman in 1924.… Each of these episodes is shattered by violence, yes, but also leavened by varying degrees of progress, despite the persistence of white people convinced of their superiority, innocence and benevolence. The result is a novel marked by acts of cruelty but not, ultimately, overwhelmed by them.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Few capture the literary world’s attention with their debut like this author did; her first novel, A Kind of Freedom, was nominated for the National Book Award and earned several other top accolades. Her anticipated follow-up offers a bracing window into Southern life and tensions, alternating between two women’s stories—set nearly 100 years apart.
Entertainment Weekly
[A] sweeping novel…. Sexton’s characters gain strength by finding one another across the generations.
New Yorker
The fragility fashioned by the sacrifices of Black bodies is confronted in this smart and spooky novel.
Essence
A powerful tale of racial tensions across generations.
People
Wilkerson crafts a necessary narrative on motherhood, race and freedom. (A Must Read Book of the Year)
Time
In this incantatory novel by the author of A Kind of Freedom, a biracial New Orleans woman grapples with prejudice by excavating the story of a female ancestor who endured the roil between slavery and the Jazz Age.
Oprah Magazine,
(Starred review) [An] excellent story of a New Orleans family’s ascent from slavery to freedom…. A chilling plot twist reveals the insidious racial divide that stretches through the generations, but it’s the larger message that’s so timely… powerful and full of hope.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [W]ell-crafted…. The dynamics of a brutal past… is core here, but the narrative… [acknowledges] that the past is not completely past…. Two fearless women separated by time but both dealing with white women’s racism.
Library Journal
It's rare for dual narratives to be equally compelling, and Sexton achieves this while illustrating the impact of slavery long after its formal end.… Readers will engage fully in this compelling story of African American women who have power in a culture that attempts to dismantle it.
Booklist
(Starred review) This second novel from Sexton confirms the storytelling gifts she displayed in her lushly readable debut, A Kind of Freedom…. At the intriguing crossroads of the seen and the unseen lies a weave among five generations of women
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE REVISIONERS … then take off on your own:
1. The Revisioners is structured as different narratives, each featuring a woman trying to free herself from some kind of crisis. What are the nature of these crises, and what, if anything, do they have in common?
2. Mothers are prominent in all three narratives. What role do they play in each section? Taken all together, what central role do they play that ties all three sections together?
3. In the third narrative, the earliest in time, we are introduced to secret meetings held by slaves who call themselves the Revisioners. What does it mean to "revision," and how does revisioning become a connecting link throughout the novel (thus the title)?
4. Why is spiritual knowledge and practice so vitally important to the mothers throughout the novel?
5. Talk about Ava's experience as the only African American in her school. How does she use the imaginary "white light" to encase herself? Where does she think the white light might come from?
6. The novel recounts acts of racism: in what way does the present echo the past? To what degree has racism abated today? Or has it? Has it merely changed its appearance and modus operandi?
7. Does The Revisioners leave any hope for us today or, more important, for future generations?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan, 1991
Penguin Group
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143038108
Summary
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years.
Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past — including the terible truth even Helen does not know.
And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.
The Kitchen God's Wife is "a beautiful book" (Los Angeles Times) from the author of bestselling novels like The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement, and the new memoir, Where the Past Begins. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Also named—En-Mai Tan
• Birth—February 15, 1952
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A., M.A., San Jose State University
• Currently—San Francisco, California
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American writer, many of whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her first novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989) brought her fame and has remained one of her most popular works. It was adapted to film in 1993.
Early yeaars
Tan is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her father was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who traveled to the US to escape the Chinese Revolution. Although she was born in Oakland, California, her family moved a number of times throughout her childhood.
When she was fifteen, her father and older brother Peter both died of brain tumors within six months of each other. Tan subsequently moved with her mother and younger brother, John Jr., to Switzerland, where she finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa in Montreux.
It was during this period that Tan learned about her mother's previous marriage in China, where she had four children (a son who died in toddlerhood and three daughters). Her mother had left her husband and children behind in Shanghai — an incident that became the basis for Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club. In 1987, she and her mother traveled to China to meet her three half-sisters for the first time.
Tan enrolled at Linfield College in Oregon, a Baptist college of her mother's choosing. After she dropped out to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California, she and her mother stopped speaking for six months. Tan ended up marrying the young man in 1974 and subsequently earned both her B.A. and M.A. in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. She began her doctoral studies in linguistics at University of California-Santa Cruz and Berkeley, but abandoned them in 1976.
Career
While in school, Tan worked odd jobs — serving as a switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker. Eventually, she started writing freelance for businesses, working on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell, writing under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms.
In 1985, she turned to fiction, publishing her first story in 1986 in a small literary journal. It was later reprinted in Seventeen magazine and Grazia. On her return from the China trip with her mmother, where she had met her half-sisters, Tan learned her agent had signed a contract for a book of short stories, only three of which were written. That book eventually became The Joy Luck Club and launchd Tan's literary career.
Extras
In addition to her novels (see below), Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series airing on PBS. She has also appeared on PBS in a short spot encouraging children to write.
Tan is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band consisting of published writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Matt Groening, Dave Barry and Stephen King, among others. In 1994 she co-wrote, with the other band members, Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude.
In 1998, Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went undiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers from epileptic seizures due to brain lesions. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment, and wrote about her life with Lyme disease in a 2013 op-ed piece in the New York Times.
Tan is still married to the guy she ran off with from Linfield College and married in 1974. He is Louis DeMattei, a lawyer, and the two live in San Francisco.
Books
1989 - The Joy Luck Club
1991 - The Kitchen God's Wife
1995 - The Hundred Secret Senses
2001 - The Bonesetter's Daughter
2003 - The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (Essays)
2005 - Saving Fish from Drowning
2013 - The Valley of Amazement
2017 - Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Remarkable…mesmerizing…compelling.… An entire world unfolds in Tolstoyan tide of event and detail.… Give yourself over to the world Ms. Tan creates for you.
New York Times Book Review
A beautiful book.… [W]hat fascinates in The Kitchen God's Wife is not only the insistent storytelling but the details of Chinese life and tradition; not only how people lived but how their sensibility shines through, most notably in their speech. Amy Tan has a command with language in which event and concrete perception jump into palpable metaphor, and images from the daily world act like spiritual agents.
Los Angeles Times
Tan's mesmerizing second novel, again a story that a Chinese emigre mother tells her daughter, received a PW boxed review, spent 18 weeks on PW 's hardcover bestseller list and was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection in cloth.
Publishers Weekly
[TKGW] shows Tan's growth as a writer.… Tan is a gifted natural storyteller. The rhythms of Winnie's story are spellbinding and true, without the contrivance common in many modern novels. Highly recommended. —Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Library Journal
[P]owerful…absorbing…. Some YAs may find the beginning a bit slow, but this beautifully written, heartrending, sometimes violent story with strong characterzation will captivate their interest to the very last page. —Nancy Bard, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
School Library Journal
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Kitchen God's Wife … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe the relationship between Pearl and Winnie?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Pearl thinks of "the enormous distance that separates" her from her mother, preventing them from sharing "the most important matters" of their lives. She asks, "How did this happen?" By the novel's end, can she answer that question? Can you answer it?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: What role does the secret box play in keeping mother and daughter at bay? How do the misunderstandings continue to pile up over the years?
4. Talk about the corrosive effects of secrets. Consider that keeping secrets is ironic: withoholding information is meant to protect either the secret-keeper or someone who might be hurt or angered by the knowledge — yet it frequently ends up harming both parties. What makes secrets so incidious? Think of the secrets you have keep ... or were once kept from you.
5. What is Helen's role in the novel? What is her relationship with Winnie and with Pearl? Consider that she is a link between past and present and between mother and daughter. Why does Helen decide to reveal Winnie's secrets? Is she right to so?
6. What is the symbolic significance of cleaning and sweeping in the novel, in particular when Helen tells Winnie that she is going to reveal Winnie's secrets?
7. What affect did the departure of her mother have on Winnie (then called Jiang Weili) in both the immediate aftermath and for decades later?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Talk about the symbolic/psychological significance of Winnie's attempt to clean her mother's portrait, only to wipe off half of her mother's face. How does that act of erasure parallel Winnie's memory of her mother?
9. In what way does Winnie's history — as well as the idiomatic language and quirkiness of the characters — resemble the old folktale of the Kitchen God's Wife …and why might Amy Tan have decided to use it as the novel's title?
10. Straddling two cultures is an important motif in Tan's novel. How are both Winnie and Pearl affected by "foreign" influences — one in China and the other, years later, in America?
(Questions adapted, in part, from Sparknotes.com. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution to both Sparknotes and LitLovers. Thanks.)
Improvement
Joan Silber, 2017
Counterpoint Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781619029606
Summary
One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.
Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three-month stint at Rikers Island, their bond grows tighter.
Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honorable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a cigarette smuggling scheme, across state lines, where he could risk violating probation.
When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four-year-old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.
A novel that examines conviction, connection, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us.
The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber: "No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power." Improvement is Silber’s most shining achievement yet. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1945
• Raised—Milburn, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence; M.A., New York University
• Awards—PEN/Hemingway Award
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Joan Silber is an American novelist and short story writer, who grew up in Millburn, New Jersey, received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. from New York University. She taught at NYU and now teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Silber lives in New York City.
Silber is the author of Household Words (1981), which won a PEN/Hemingway Award, and Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories (2004), which was a finalist for both the 2004 National Book Award and the Story Prize. She has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Her work has been published in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize collections, and has also appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Paris Review.
Works
2017 - Improvement
2013 - Fools (Stories)
2008 - The Size of the World
2004 - Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories
2001 - Lucky Us
2000 - In My Other Life (Stories)
1987 - In the City
1980 - Household Words
(From Wikipedia. Retreived 12/18/2017.)
Book Reviews
Silber writes her new novel, Improvement, as a series of interlinked stories, a generous structural decision that both allows characters to fully inhabit their own narratives and gives space to the lives that intersect or run parallel to them.… This is a novel of richness and wisdom and huge pleasure. Silber knows, and reveals, how close we live to the abyss, but she also revels in joy, particularly the joy that comes from intimate relationships.
Kamila Shamsie - New York Times Book Review
[I]t feels vital to love Silber’s work, which has been too little loved, too little mentioned, beyond a small readership that seems to be composed mostly of other writers.… Silber’s great theme as a writer is the way in which humans are separated from their intentions, by desires, ideas, time.… She has an American voice: silvery, within arm’s length of old cadences, but also limber, thieving, marked by occasional raids on slang and jargon, at ease both high and low, funny, tenderhearted, sharp. It gives her the rare ability to reach the deepest places in the plainest ways.
Charles Finch - Washington Post
You can feel, in those words, how tenderly Silber treats her large cast of men and women, how she deals out small moments of grace even as things go terribly wrong for them. This seems like a good place to bring up Silber’s voice: unshowy and intimate, precise and colloquial, she seems almost to be confiding the novel to us, a worldly wise aunt not unlike Kiki herself. She marshals great feeling in the course of Improvement without making it seem a big deal.… An everyday masterpiece.
Newsday
The prose serenely glides over irreversible, defining moments and how differently characters deal with the curveballs life throws at them.… Improvement is a meditation on the space of time and distance and certain defining events change people and propel them to re-calibrate their priorities in life.… The prose eloquently evinces human emotions—love and heartbreak, regret and loss, guilt and redemption.… Improvement reads like fragmented character studies of a disparate group of people, intricately woven together by chance and fate. Exquisitely woven, this is a rich tapestry of human conditions.
Chicago Review of Books
In Silber’s artfully structured new novel, the stories of a multitude of characters ricochet in cunning ways, crossing generations and continents.… [An] intriguing contemporary chronicle.
BBC Culture
If your must-read this month is a love-and-loss story seasoned with single motherhood and smuggling schemes, National Book Award finalist Joan Silber's Improvement hits the sexy sweet spot from page one.
Elle
There's always room for Joan Silber's Improvement.
Vanity Fair
[R]eminiscent of [Silber's] compact story collections in novel form, with mixed results.… With so many characters, it’s a lot of ground to cover…, and some of the subplots lack the depth needed to make this a fully cohesive ensemble novel.
Publishers Weekly
[I]nterconnected stories, in which the connections are not always initially apparent.… The subtle ripple effects of individual choices and actions are eloquently portrayed through Silber's penetrating eye in this elegant and thought-provoking novel. —Lauren Gilbert, Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY
Library Journal
Silber weaves together character studies that examine love, money … and the ripple effects of choices made. Silber’s decision to write events of great magnitude from everyday points of view lends realism and universality to her story.
Booklist
(Starred review.) There is something so refreshing and genuine about this book, coming partly from the bumpy weave of its unpredictable story and partly from its sharply turned yet refreshingly unmannered prose. A winner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Improvement … then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Reyna. What is the significance of the fact that her body art is "piecemeal"? In what way is Reyna's life like her tattoos? When she tries to explain to Kiki that tattoos are no different than patterns on rugs, Kiki asks her, "are you a floor"? Is she?
2. What do you think of Boyd? Why does Reyna raise no protest when Boyd comes up with his get-rich-quick scheme to smuggle cigarettes? Were you screaming an internal "nooooo!" at some of her decisions? Why is Reyna so attracted to him?
3. Talk about the similarities, or at least commonalities, between Reyna and Darisse. Why does Darisse hesitate with Silas?
4. What is the reason that Teddy falls apart after the accident? To what degree is he responsible for all the dysfunction, and now the accident, in his life?
5. As a young adventurist, Kiki led a colorful life in Turkey. But she came to see herself as "flung about by the winds of love." What does she mean? How has her experience colored her attitude toward life when we meet her early on in the novel?
6. Of the many characters in the novel (were there too many?), whom do you find most sympathetic and why? Who most exasperated you and why?
7. All of the characters reach a point at which they seem to ask a question central to the novel: how does one avoid assuming responsibility for the results of one's action and choices — all the while pretending to have control over life's outcomes? How does that question pertain to each of the characters?
How do you answer that question as regards to your own life? Are you responsible for your destiny? Are any of us? Or is life a series of accidents and random occurrences over which we have little control? Isn't it fair to say that chance far too often intervenes and throws our plans and best intentions awry (aka the butterfly effect)? Or might you say it's how we respond to random chance that determines the degree of our control? What does the novel seem to suggest the answer to the question is?
8. What role does love play in Improvement? "People thought love was everything, but … surely too much was asked of love." Even the sign at the vet's office where Reyna works warns: "New Puppy? Love is not Enough." Do you agree? Or is that a cynical view? Isn't love the very thing we need more of? Or is love "not enough" because we misunderstand the meaning of love?
9. What is the significance of the book's title, "Improvement"?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)